BELFAST — The Belfast Poetry Festival announces the return of the annual Maine Postmark Poetry Contest. Now in its 14th year, the contest seeks previously unpublished poems sent through the postal service with a Maine postmark no later than August 1, 2024. The Belfast Poetry Festival committee will screen entries and forward ten finalists to this year’s judge, poet Diannely Antigua, who will choose first, second, and third place winners.

Contest finalists will be notified by September 15, 2024. The first-place winner will receive a $100 cash prize and publication in The Maine Review. The winner and finalists will be invited to read their poem and be honored at this fall’s Belfast Poetry Festival. For entry information, visit https://www.belfastpoetryfestival.com/maine-postmark-poetry-contest.

Contest judge Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and chosen for The Best of the Net Anthology. Her poems can be found in Poem-a-Day, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Washington Square Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. In 2022, she was proclaimed the 13th Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the youngest and first person of color to receive the title. In 2023, she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship to launch The Bread & Poetry Project, and in 2024, she was awarded an Excellence in Artistry Award from Black Lives Matter New Hampshire. She currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire as the inaugural Nossrat Yassini Poet in Residence.

The 19th Annual Belfast Poetry Festival takes place October 18-20, 2024. For more information, visit www.belfastpoetryfestival.com.